Moving On
by Sambev
Summary: EDITED Sometimes the sand just washes out beneath you, and you can't help thinking it's for the best. 18Krillin


(AN: I edited this, so it is less strewn with comma splices and all those good things, so hopfully it is easier to read. I thought it was odd that I wrote something so blatently depressing, but 2006 was my prime year for depressing thoughts, and writing sad things is a good way to get it out of your system. I've always liked the idea of Juu just barging in on Krillin. Hey, he asked for it, why should she play hard to get when she could have a guy who would kiss her feet is she asked? Please enjoy!)

* * *

Krillin bound lightly down the stairs, still holding onto vision of the golden goddess from his dreams and stretching as he walked. He spied his master, still in his chair from the night before. "Gosh, it's a beautiful day isn't it?"

The small island home was still dimmed by the closed blinds. He approached his master, who was perched in his reclining chair with a magazine in his hands. Krillin glanced at the cover as he reached over the old man's head to let some light into the room and blushed. "Can you believe we're having weather like this, this late in the year Master Roshi? Can't wait to see the sun set."

There was no answer. The old hermit peered silently at his magazine, his eyes veiled by his trade mark sunglasses.

"Master?"

The day ended as beautifully as it had begun. The setting sun turned the sky and ocean into a dreamy water color painting like Krillin had predicted it would. The white sands outside the weathered pink house were more crowded than they had been in a long time, but their faces dark and unappreciative of the lovely sight.

Krillin didn't cry, although he could have and no one would think any less of him for it. He had earlier that morning, from the shock and horror of finding his master dead when the night before he had seemed so perfectly fine.

The young monk had known it was going to happen but it didn't make him any more prepared.

A hand landed on his shoulder and rubbed it the comforting way of a woman who dealt with death often enough. "Here," Bulma whispered, "we found this in his dresser." She handed him the written will and excused herself in a voice brimming with tears. Krillin pulled his bloodshot eyes off the horizon to read his master's will.

The island was his. That didn't surprise him though, they'd discussed it before on particularly dreary nights when they were both feeling depressed and alienated enough from society to bring those things up. Krillin would listen and nod politely on those nights, somehow believing that day would never come.

He continued to read. Krillin could distribute Roshi's belongings as he pleased, or, Krillin couldn't help smiling grimly, "you can burn it for all I care."

Yamcha approached him, looking as if he really wanted to be somewhere else. "Hey man."

Everyone was whispering. It had been so long since any of them had experienced a loss that couldn't be restored with the dragon balls it was as if the reality of it still hadn't hit them. They cheated death so many times, maybe they had gotten spoiled. Krillin sure knew he was.

"Hey." Krillin offered his friend a half hearted grin and continued reading. His eyes glistened but any tears that actually fell were unnoticed in the fading light. The wide normally bright eyes reflected the now crimson glow in the sky. Barely audible he muttered, "I can't do that."

"What?" Yamcha tugged the paper from Krillin's willing hands.

"Krillin?" Krillin glanced up to find Gohan's soft eyes peering into his. They were puffy from crying. Chichi smiled politely with her hands on her son's shoulders.

"How're you doing Gohan?" He said as cheerfully as could manage, then looked to Chichi, "I'm glad you two came."

"I wouldn't have missed it." Her dark eyes scanned him. She had experienced her share of losses too and usually denied Gohan any visits to the island. Krillin and Goku's other friends were supposedly bad influences, but as she looked at him, her sadness was not for the old man, he saw, but intended for him. She of all people would know that the one who passed away was most often not the one grieved for.

Krillin began to say something, although he wasn't sure what. Probably something useless about how Goku would be glad that they'd come, when Yamcha interrupted. His eyes and scared face visually disturbed by the request. "You don't have to do that."

"Yes, I do," His voice faltered, "It was his last request."

Chichi questioned quietly, "What?"

Krillin rubbed a hand nervously over his head. Yamcha answered for him, "He said that we wanted his pupils, Krillin and Goku I guess, to disintegrate his body, so that he could become part of the island." Yamcha pointed out to her the end of the will as proof.

"No." Chichi gasped, almost resentfully.

"I can help you Krillin." Gohan told his friend.

Krillin just shook his head. He knew his friends would understand if he explained it, but Krillin wasn't sure he could explain what it mean to have a Master as long as he had in the traditional sense.

The speck on an island was submerged in a blinding yellow energy that reflected upon the black ocean. And the young monks master and surrogate father dissipated into the sand as the pupil forced ki, sorrowfully, from his palms to fulfill the old man's last request.

Juuhachigou woke on the mainland with her arms wrapped around her deceptively slight frame. She had snuck through the unlocked window of the top floor of a hotel, and through the window she could see the moon. She hadn't been asleep long.

But what had awoken her?

When she had first flown away from Kami's lookout she'd been paranoid. Every ki that flared up unexpectedly had set her on edge, until she did a bit of spying and discovered it was simply for exercise. Then she had learned to adjust to and ignore it, because it was mostly that Namek Piccolo or that dense Saiyan Vegeta.

This one was new but not unfamiliar. This one was sad and pitifully weak. It began small and became stronger until it evened out, playing through her senses like the long drawn out note of an instrument.

Krillin, her "memory" fed her. She couldn't deny to herself that she didn't think about him. Sometimes he came to the mainland while she was there and she would seek him out by his ki because it burned so much brighter than the rest of the humans. She would catch glimpses of him as he picked out produce and hummed to himself. At first she was unable to recognize him dressed casually in a baseball cap and smiling instead of the nervous fighter she'd first seen.

Maybe, because of those occasional glimpses, she had chosen to spend so much of her time in the city.

The steady beam of energy trickled away and finally vanished. Leaving a hollow whining in her senses where she had adjusted to it. She pulled the stiff hotel sheets around her and tried to relax, but was suddenly too awake.

Where had the time gone? Krillin tore a page off the hanging calendar by the stairs, then another when he realized he'd forgotten the month before as well. It seemed impossible that so much time had passed when it seemed to pass so painfully slow.

His eye caught the clock on the window sill by the stairs. Was it really that late? What had he done with himself all day?

The hall light played off the window, casting his reflection of the glass. He ran his hand through his black hair as if realizing it for the first time. It hardly seemed real to him any more, that he'd once been a monk at a monastery. A few stars spilled though the glare. He moved closer, spying the mere sliver of a moon and galaxy spilled out before him.

Krillin slipped on his training shoes where they lay on top of one another by the front door and crept outside, flicking the lights off as he went. Red, the last bit of day time, was caught by the broiling storm clouds that were retreating over the horizon. The storm had hit the tiny island hard but it had come out alright. The trees were a bit bent and the exterior of the house filthy with caked salt and sand, but the storm had certainly wiped the sky clean.

The night made him tired, and he lay down carefully, secretly daunted by the sand that contained the last memory of his master.

Krillin closed his eyes for a moment and let his body relax into the sand. He could almost feel the way he did as a teen when he would fall asleep on the beach after training, until Master Roshi came out, tapping him awake with his staff before the tide came up too high.

The chilly ocean breeze ruffled his clothing and cooled his burning face. The night was so clear, the young man mused, once turning his gaze to the sky, he could almost see straight through the Milky Way and into Otherworld where Goku and Master Roshi were, probably not thinking of him.

Waves lapped around his shins, waking him although he had not been aware of falling asleep. Maybe, just maybe, he would see what happened if he left it to wash him away. Maybe he would fall asleep on the sand and see if he woke in the water or an entirely different dimension.

The roof creaked as she curled her fingers around the ledge, leaning low to peer at the young man who had resigned himself to the filthy sand. He didn't acknowledge the sound, had probably overlooked it as the wind. No, he wouldn't guess that this night and several before that he had not been alone on the island.

Did he live alone on this island? She wondered, although she had yet to see anyone she couldn't be sure that they weren't simply away.

His dark eyes slid open, she flinched although she knew she was well hidden in the shadows, and followed his gaze up.

All she knew was her life as an android. Dr. Gero had trained her and her brother to ignore what little emotions they had ever had. Brainwashed them into thinking those feelings didn't exist.

For a moment her breath caught in her throat, and she knew that those emotions were as real as anything else. She knew and welcomed them uncertainly back into her life. Her sharp blue eyes followed the uninterrupted swirls of the universe and she could hardly draw her attention away.

She brushed a few strands of her golden hair behind one ear. The sky, she decided, should always look like that.

And she could live here if it was under such as sky, with… she looked down, but he was gone.

Sand washed away beneath him. Asleep, or maybe awake. The bright crystalline stars disappeared into a silver haze from beneath the ocean's surface. Minutely, a foreign part of himself that he'd somehow become detached from over the years was pleased by how easy it was. It might have been the angry adolescent or the helpless warrior that rejoiced, that for once in his whole diminutive existence, something was actually easy.

Again his mind wondered why his master hadn't come to wake him. He'd been warned about the gluttonous tide since his first night on the island, and knew the old man always kept an eye on him. Then he dismissed the thought with a sting of tears that threatened to make him release his breath.

The tropical waters were warm, giving the sensation of floating, of weightlessness…

Once or twice as a teen he'd stayed out late on purpose, feigning sleep, just to prove to himself that someone actually cared. He'd wait with his eyes closed, concentrating so hard on that moment when someone can out and touched his shoulder or said his name, that once it happened it started him. Master Roshi, or sometimes even Goku, would think he twitched because he'd be awoken from a dream. He was an odd kid like that.

Did something touch his arm? His wide eyes snapped open, stung by the salt water, but there was nothing to see in the suffocating ocean.

There. There was something.

Thick orbs of light rolled painfully across his vision. Startled, Krillin gasped instinctively and inhaled a lung full of water. He pulled away but found himself drug towards the surface. Convulsing as he struggled uselessly and he tried to expel the water that was choking him.

The night air was cold against him. A hand around his wrist tightened painfully until he was dropped on the beach from the air.

After a moment of coughing roughly and shivering he decided that he was alright.

"What is wrong with you?" The distinctively feminine voice sounded angry. Krillin felt his already pounding heart skip a beat and glanced up at the android. She looked infuriated enough to destroy him, and trembed as her wet hair and clothing clung to her skin. He forced his eyes away with difficulty and onto his own small hands.

At first he couldn't speak. Pulling himself to his feet and nervously shaking water from his hair and gi.

"Well?" She folded her arms across her chest and stared him down with those shocking blue eyes that still managed to smolder despite the darkness.

"Well," he forced himself to grin weakly at the gorgeous woman who'd appeared seemingly out of nowhere to verbally abuse him. "I'm an idiot. Can I um… you…" Well, he'd tried not to look. "I'll get you a towel."

Krillin held the door for her, cheeks burning. She stepped sideways around him, her eyes scanning the humble kitchen with an unreadable expression.

"You live here alone?" Juuhachigou asked plainly. She liked it here, although she wouldn't admit that to him, and stood dripping on the floor and imagining the house in full light.

"Oh," he seemed surprised she would ask such an average question. "Only for the last few months."

"Who did you live with?" She demanded in as soft a tone as she could muster.

"My sensei just recently passed away." It was a plain statement, one he sounded almost seemed ashamed of.

She turned on him again where he stood staring at her in awe. One look sent him scurrying out of the kitchen, only glancing once at her over his shoulder.

He never asked why she had been on his island, and she decided she would reward him by not interrogating the strange little monk about what they both knew was nearly a suicide.

"H-here." He scratched the back of his neck and swallowed hard. She liked the way his wiry black hair stuck to his forehead. She took the towel without thanking him, although she wished that she had.

"So, where am I going to sleep?"

The young man twitched visibly, his obvious astonishment brought the hint of a smile to her pale pink lips.

"My room is upstairs, I think you, I'll, uh, I'll go change the sheets. Wait." His face lit up and he excused himself from the room again.

Juuhachigou smiled to herself and fingered the soft cotton sheets. He had found her some clothing, said they belonged to either a Bulma or a Launch, but neither name meant much to her. She could hear him pacing downstairs, and earlier she'd heard glass shatter but decided to save him the embarrassment and not investigate. She could picture him down stairs wringing his hands, his large expressive eyes darting around, and knocking over a picture in his nervousness.

That's okay, she thought, if she stayed around long enough he'd adjust to her. And besides, he should have thought of that before saving her life.

Krillin finished sweeping glass off the wooden floor. Glancing up the stairs he couldn't keep color from his face when he thought about Juuhachigou, the woman he always pictured in his dreams and always prayed to see out of the corner of his eye, laying on his bed and using his pillow.

Should he thank her in the morning, or would she think that too pathetic of him? Maybe he could make her breakfast, assuming she was even there when he woke up. If he could sleep at all…

He tried to calm himself with a deep breath and reasoned with himself. She must think he was a pretty okay guy or she wouldn't have bothered to fish him out of the sea.

He glanced up the stairs again and grinned. Maybe he'd just say hi, but he'd have to practice if he wanted to say it without choking, which he might do anyway. He could pretend she was just another of the Kame House's many visitors, just another friend, another enemy who'd changed her mind and been lured to the island like he himself had.

And maybe if he was lucky, the island wouldn't have to be such a lonely place anymore.

Fin!


End file.
